Is there a conspiracy in the poultry sector?

Jan 29, 2012 News

---

 

By Leonard Gildarie

It has been reported that Guyana consumes on average 400,000 pounds of chicken monthly.

Mind-boggling…If you are a layman.
But for the producers, high prices mean more profits, or at least that would be the logical take.
The reality is that chicken farming, which has been emerging as a source of livelihood for Guyanese, has been a matter of uncertainty for the smaller farmers who have been investing their little savings, only to suffer severe losses in recent months.
Many have thrown their hands up in the air and pulled out after helplessly watching their chickens die in large numbers or “refuse to grow”.
And the losses have nothing much to do with a glut in the market. Rather, small farmers are blaming poor quality baby chicks and feed, and a concerted effort by a few powerful farmers to drive prices upwards.
Based on complaints and reports that government has been moving to rein in the situation, Kaieteur News as part of a series of articles on a number of critical issues affecting Guyana, has started to a take a look at the rearing of broilers and how consumers are being affected.
Many small farmers have taken loans from IPED, and even from family members and friends, for what they see as a quick way to earn cash. The hardest part is the building of the pens. In most cases, the little home farms are in the backyard and on average can take around 300-400 of the broiler birds.
But for about two years now, the industry has been seeing a rather strange thing happening.
According to one wholesaler, who buys the meatbirds from small farmers and then retails them with his Canter truck, he is firmly of the belief that producers of baby chicks may have something to do with the high prices.

 

HIGH PRICES
Plucked chicken is currently selling for over $350 per pound. The difference of $5 and $10 may mean thousands of dollars in profits for farmers. With feed prices moving even higher in recent months, it is unlikely chicken prices will come down.
“The chicken we are buying from the farmers don’t grow beyond four pounds. In all my eight years of business, something is definitely wrong. You can’t tell me that all the farmers not doing something right. It gotta to be a problem with the baby chicks they buying.”
And there may be some truth to what the wholesaler is saying. Unable to source enough chicken in Demerara, he is travelling to Berbice twice weekly to buy from a large farmer there.
At least one large scale baby chicks producer on the East Bank of Demerara has said that a few of the smaller importers are running a racket by not vaccinating them. How true this is remains to be seen.
Last year, officials of the regulatory body, the Guyana Livestock Development Authority (GLDA) which oversees the poultry farming sector, made surprise visits to a number of hatcheries.
Agri officials have since admitted that they were refused permission to inspect one large scale hatchery on the East Bank of Demerara. Because a few of the hatcheries still had the eggs incubated, the officials were unable to determine whether any hanky panky was happening.
Hatcheries’ officials have said that Guyana is buying from one supplier in the United States.

 

WHAT’S WRONG?
So the question is what is going wrong?
There are a number of reasons for high prices. And it all has to do with supplies.
“If somehow, the number of baby chicks is being controlled to the market and not enough is available, then you may have a shortage. Then, if they are not vaccinated, and this may be because the hatcheries want to cut costs, then farmers will suffer losses from high mortality rates. We feel that this is deliberate,” opined one large farmer from the East Coast of Demerara.
But the Guyana Poultry Producers Association last year, during a number of meetings with the Agriculture Ministry, denied that it has anything to do with high prices. The entity blamed it on a glut in the market and a financial decision to ship the broiler eggs, instead of the faster air freight.
Officials said that hatching eggs shipped would have a higher mortality rate than those flown in.
“Yes, you will have baby chicks being sold from one place considerably less than another hatchery. We all buy from the same place. But when we run out, we buy from them but have to vaccinate them again to protect ourselves from losses,” one large scale producer told this newspaper.
At the end of the day, the small farmers have consistently been taking blows. While in each region, there are technical officers from GLDA, many farmers are not calling them for assistance.
From the poor construction and ventilation of the pens to improper placement of feeding and water cans, which can lead to stunted growth of the chickens, the problems are many.
“The handling of the hatching eggs… the treatment of the baby chicks by farmers… the way the pens are built; how the pens are cleaned…all have an impact on how the chicken comes out after the six weeks they are there,” an Agri official explained.
Then there are problems with poor quality feed. While Guyana Stockfeeds Limited is the largest and most reliable producer to date, there are a number of other smaller entities, and it is yet unclear what kind of quality checks are being carried out by the authorities to ensure that the feed they produce, made mainly with ingredients that have to be shipped in overseas, is of a satisfactory quality. Feed being kept too long may go bad and harm the chickens being reared, Kaieteur News was told.
One small farmer who invested her  “last cent” into 300 baby chicks bought from an East Bank Demerara hatchery was forced to kill and dump them after they remained at a heartbreaking two and half pounds after five weeks – an agonising period of repeated feeding and wasted labour.
In the coming weeks, we will be talking to officials of the Ministry of Agriculture, the hatcheries, feed producers and farmers, to shed some light on the sector.
In the meantime, have a good week.

---

---